IA History IA

[MollyS]

Hi,

So IAs are coming up, and I really need to choose a topic. I've come up with a few already, like I'm really interested in feminism, and I was thinking perhaps something to do with Barbies. I've spoken with my supervisor already, but he says that I should give him a more focused topic idea.

I was thinking about how Barbies have evolved from back then to now, and how Barbie represents her own woman who has taken up these fantastic roles and jobs that woman today still haven't been able to do. (President) But it's not exactly a question, and I'm not really connecting the dots here.

If this isn't a solid enough idea, I think I'd do something along the lines of "How has WWII affected women's fashion?" But I'm open to opinions, (please) and if you could just maybe toss a few ideas in, that'd be great.

Thanks!

[NJ0330]

Hi,

Feminism is a great theme to work around. So good choice on that... However, you need a minimum of 4 books that can act as sources, both primary and secondary, for your IA. Writing 2000 words would be difficult without an effective summary of evidence. I do not know too much about Barbie history and so, i found it doubtful that there would be more than 4 historical books on the matter. BUT, I really don't know too much about it.

A friend of mine did her IA on Coco Chanel advanced women's rights. Thats following your theme of Feminism. I mentioned this because she got a 7 in her History HL.

Anyway,

Good Luck!

[iblyf]

I would have to say that for your history IA you are going to need a really good argument with extensive analysis of various opinions, arguments etc. to answer some kind of research question. So, basically your IA is just a long report using evidence to answer a question. So, the most important thing that you can do right now it to turn your ideas into a question. At this stage, that question does NOT have to be perfect at all! It is likely that it will change regularly throughout the process.

I am sad to say though that I'm not sure how suitable this topic is for a history IA (the barbie one). Although I am also really interested in feminism and women's rights, I feel that the IA would become more exploratory than argumentative which is ​not what you want. Although your exams sound like a long way away, I cannot recommend enough doing your IA on something that is going to seriously complement what you have already learnt. You put a huge amount of work into it so it's most definitely worth doing it on something that is going to make your revision for exams that much easier and make you know a bit more about a question that could very well come up on the exam. If you have already done the research and formed an opinion about the topic from doing your IA on it, you will have all this extra knowledge to bring into your exam essay than most other students who have answered that question- simply because you have spent hours and hours researching and analysing the evidence to come to your own conclusion!

So, if you are still interested in feminism through politics, try and connect that to something that you have/ will be studying in your history course. Even if you are studying WWI, I doubt that women's fashion would really assist you in answering an exam question. Unfortunately I can't be the one to give you the ideas, but feel free to post your own. I definitely recommend you google the topic syllabus to get an understanding of what you will be tested on the exam to find areas that might interest you- for example, in Single Party States there is a section on treatment of women and minorities. All you have to do is type in something like "IB History Single Party States Syllabus" or study guide. What you are looking for are dot-points of all of the areas that you are expected to know as a part of that topic for the exam. For example, I was really interested in learning more about the origins of the Cold War, as so far, there had always been a question on it on the exams and I really wanted to be able to have lots of great points which would allow me to answer it really effectively. It turns out that the exam question for November 2013, although no where near like my IA question, allowed me to draw upon a lot of points that I had made in my IA. As I had already researched it, I knew heaps about all the different historians opinions as well as what I thought about that topic which allowed me to come up with a thesis and argument points very quickly so that I could write my essay not only more effectively, but with more knowledge and at a faster rate as I kind of already knew what I wanted to say.

Also, my history teacher recommended last year that a great idea for the IA is to look through past exams at the kind of questions being asked to get some inspiration for your IA question/theme of study.

I hope all of that helps!

[MollyS]

Hi,

 

Sorry for coming back so late. Thank you all for replying. I'm seriously concerned about my IA now, because your replies are completely right, there is not much one can find on the history of Barbies in literature. I'm kind of panicked because everyone's already gotten their research done and I need to restart. Okay, this was my research question, which I've run by with my supervisor, How has the Barbie doll influenced society/feminism/women throughout history? (Focusing on the sexual rights movement of the 60's)

 

The Coco Chanel idea was really good, except there have been so many IAs already written about it, and my supervisor even gave me it as an example. I can definitely toss the feminism idea, especially because it's completely not related to my syllabus. I really liked your idea of looking through the past exams, so I've done that. Except we haven't learn much of anything really, there's the French Rev and the Great War, we've been really slow to be honest. I really like the French Revolution, so perhaps that'll be a good way to go?? 

 

Anyways, thank you again for answering, it's been eyeopening. I really appreciated your opinions.

[lcdrz]

I have a friend who did her IA on something sort of related to the French Revolution, but she focused on Marie Antoinette and how accurate her reputation and the representation of her in history was correct (I think she got a 7?), so if you took something on the lines of that you could perhaps add the theme of feminism to it? 

 

I personally struggled a lot to find a question because I wanted to do something outside of the syllabus which I had briefly studied before (the Vietnam war and how media influenced the policy of Vietnamization) although realised that I did not have much evidence to back it up, so did something on what we had studied in class. If you can't find a question or your Barbie idea does not pan out, you could pick something on your syllabus - it really helps consolidate your knowledge on one area on the syllabus as you are required to research it in much further depth.

 

Good luck with it! It's really not too bad as it is a very formulaic piece of work, so you don't have much room to stray from the criteria. 

[Thrashmaster]

Hi,

 

Sorry for coming back so late. Thank you all for replying. I'm seriously concerned about my IA now, because your replies are completely right, there is not much one can find on the history of Barbies in literature. I'm kind of panicked because everyone's already gotten their research done and I need to restart. Okay, this was my research question, which I've run by with my supervisor, How has the Barbie doll influenced society/feminism/women throughout history? (Focusing on the sexual rights movement of the 60's)

 

The Coco Chanel idea was really good, except there have been so many IAs already written about it, and my supervisor even gave me it as an example. I can definitely toss the feminism idea, especially because it's completely not related to my syllabus. I really liked your idea of looking through the past exams, so I've done that. Except we haven't learn much of anything really, there's the French Rev and the Great War, we've been really slow to be honest. I really like the French Revolution, so perhaps that'll be a good way to go?? 

 

Anyways, thank you again for answering, it's been eyeopening. I really appreciated your opinions.

Well, feminism is a good history topic in that you can double up and tie it in to your classwork. Since you're in Canada, you're taking History of the Americas, and one of the topics is "feminist movements in the Americas." I'd choose something that had to do with that rather than Barbie if I were you so that I'd have more things to talk about during the final exam.

 

But, the Barbie idea is interesting. Remember, this is a research paper that proves you can write a research paper. Your job isn't to break new ground - you're not writing a doctorate. Instead, you should be answering a simple question that you can actually answer in 2000 words. I'd recommend using To What Extent as your command term and then comparing something to its intentions. In other words, in your case (don't know if this is true, probably not):

To what extent did Barbie dolls meet the intentions of Barbie's creator?

 

This is a silly question, but it has the right idea. You would then look at something the creator wrote or said when Barbie was first being developed, and then compare it to something he/she said later, a company statement, or something along those lines to decide whether those goals were met.